LAVA WATCH

World's largest volcano found at bottom of Pacific

Tamu Massif is size of British Isles and one of biggest in solar system

Published: 09/06/2013 at 11:45 PM

(Toronto National Post) A volcano discovered on the floor of the Pacific Ocean isn’t just the largest in the world, it rivals the greatest volcanic peak in the entire solar system, Mars’ Olympus Mons.

The volcano, 1,500 kilometres east of Japan and called the Tamu Massif, is the size of the British Isles and is one of the biggest in the solar system.

“This says that here on Earth we have analogous volcanoes to the big ones we find on Mars,” William Sager, a marine geologist at the University of Houston in Texas, told Nature. “I’m not sure anybody would have guessed that.”